


Inhumanity Can Be Hard To Grasp

by dudaa



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Ghost Biology (Danny Phantom), Half-Ghost, Halfa, Hurt No Comfort, Light Angst, One Shot, Other, being a ghost with ghost hunting parents is hard, danny is not human, danny's inner thoughts, i have no idea how to tag this, idk if this is light or heavy angst, inner musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25365628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dudaa/pseuds/dudaa
Summary: "Coming to terms of one’s own inhumanity is not easy. Danny knew this better than anyone. Especially when said inhumanity is something so unbelievable, so against the laws of science, so terrifying-"Aka: the inner musings of Danny Fenton on how being a half-ghost is not all flowers and rainbows.
Relationships: None
Comments: 11
Kudos: 87





	Inhumanity Can Be Hard To Grasp

Half-ghost.

Danny Fenton knew what he was. He had come to terms with it. Even though his friends were still in denial, even though they tried sugarcoating it.

“You’re still human, Danny.”

He knew it wasn’t true. He was a ghost. He knew it. But did they? His friends still held tight to the idea that Danny was human, they said it once a day to reassure him, but he knew they must be faking it. It was impossible that every time they looked at his striking white hair, his radioactive green eyes, they were still blind to the fact that no, he wasn’t human. Not anymore. Not entirely. If he was honest with himself, Danny would confess it hurt. It hurt hearing his friends deny what he was. As if being who - _what_ \- he was wasn’t good. As if it was a bad, scary thing they had to try and hide.

“Just a human with ghost powers”, they said.

No. He was a ghost. He was a ghost as much as he was a human. He was a halfa. A hybrid of two species that should never mix. Stuck in the bridge between two worlds. He had died. Danny was alive, yes. But he had died. Danny could still remember the feeling of electricity, thousands of volts running through his body. He could hear his own screams as he felt as though his flesh was burning and his lungs were too small, and it was all so bright, and he couldn’t close his eyes, and he couldn’t get out, he couldn’t escape the pain, and it hurt _so much_ -

His vitals were ridiculously wrong, now. He didn’t even need to breath as often as he used to. Not even close. His blood was mixed - _tainted?_ \- with ectoplasm. His heart rate was dangerously slow. Well, dangerously slow for a human. But he wasn’t a human anymore. He knew that.

Coming to terms of one’s own inhumanity is not easy. Danny knew this better than anyone. Especially when that inhumanity is something so unbelievable, so against the laws of science, so _terrifying_ -

He was a ghost. At least half of him was. He was taught early in life that ghosts are bad. Ghosts are evil. Ghosts don’t have feelings, ghosts are uncapable of real thoughts, pain, emotions, or of anything remotely human. Ghosts shouldn’t exist. They’re blind _creatures_ , fueled by terrible obsessions. Their mere existence is a threat.

Now that he was a ghost himself, he thought it would be easier to dismiss such theories. He knew they weren’t true. Well, not most of them anyways. He had emotions, he felt pain. But after hearing time and time again about the inherent foulness of all ghosts, one can surely lay awake at night wondering-

And again, there was another issue. On the surface, nothing had changed. Danny Fenton was the same. He still thought the same, felt the same. At least he thought he did. But as much as he tried to ignore it, as much as he hid it from the people closest to him, Danny had changed. Subtlety, but surely. It was something that crept into his mind so slowly that it took him a while to notice how much it influenced him. His _obsession_. Danny didn’t like to think about, much less talk about it. No ghost does, after all. And it was worse with him. He shouldn’t _have_ an obsession. He was still human. Except, he wasn’t. And his obsession made that perfectly clear.

Did his friends know? Did they know about his – his obsession? This _fixation_ that made him so, so inhuman. He hoped not. He tried to play it cool, pass it off as just a stupid hero complex that came with all the cool powers. Oh, but it was so much more than that.

Not satisfying his obsession drove him crazy, made him sick. Physically so. He needed to fulfill it as much as he needed air. More than he needed air, even. After all, wasn’t a ghost’s obsession what tied them to the earth? What kept them alive? Well, not really alive. In Danny’s case, though, he supposed, the obsession that fueled his ghost half was what kept him stable. Alive. _Half_ -alive. He couldn’t ignore it. But he could hide it.

That’s what he did. What he did best. Danny Fenton hid things. He hid whatever made him less human. Unhuman. He hid from his parents. The ghost hunters. The scientists that knew better ( _worse?_ ) than anyone how _vile_ ghosts were. How disgusting. The researchers who would do anything - _anything_ \- to learn more about these creatures, these otherworldly species, to understand every detail down to their molecules. It didn’t matter what they’d have to do. Ghosts were already dead. They didn’t matter. _He_ didn’t matter. Not if he was a ghost. Not if he wasn’t human. So, Danny pretended.

And it _hurt_. It hurt so much having to pretend all the time. Having to hide who - _what_ \- he was. Knowing full well that if he stopped, he’d be nothing more than a thing, a specimen. An unhuman _ghost_. At least in their eyes.

It’s not like Danny himself hated what he was. He was a ghost. But he was also a human. He was a halfa. His dual nature was a part of him now, his two halves. It didn’t feel weird, not to him ( ~~just to everybody else~~ ). He didn’t feel evil. He didn’t feel vile. If only he could take his mind off what _they_ said. If only he could ignore the fact that the people who were supposed to love him the most thought that just for being what he was he was unworthy. Unlovable. Evil. _Unhuman_. All because of the ectoplasm running through his veins, mixed with his blood, keeping him alive. Keeping him _half-dead_.

But they _follow_ him, they constantly throw on his face everything that makes him awful, tainted, disgusting. They’re his _parents_. And they hate him.

And so, he pretends. If that’s the only way his parents can love him, then so be it. Someday they will find out, it’s inevitable, and he’ll be lucky if they just throw him out without vivisecting him first. He might as well enjoy it while they can still be a family. While they still love him. At least he can pretend.

Danny Fenton was a halfa. But he knew how to pretend.


End file.
